E 




Class H 4 ^a 



THE 



ROBBERS OF ADULLAM; 



A GLANCE AT "ORGANIC SJNS; 



A SERMON, 

PKMACHKD AT CA?.:EI{IEGErCST, NOVEMBEIi 27, 1345. 

BY J. C, L O VE JO Y, 

PASrOR OF THE SECOND E V A N G . CONG. CllVRCil 



BOSTON: 

DAVID H. ELA, PRINTER, 37 CORNHILL. 
1845. 






'0^ 



THE 



ROBBERS OF ADULLAM 



SERMON. 

Text — Luke x. 29. Who is my neighbor 7 

This is Thanksgiving day. A day consecrated by 
the examy>ie of our fathers, for rendering praise to 
Almighty God for the bounties of the year. A day on 
which they recounted his mercies and rendered thanks 
for all his manifold blessings. A day for the exercise 
of a generous hospitality to kindred and friends, and for 
sending portions to the poor and the needy. The heart 
of every son of want should be made glad ; the widow 
and the orphan should sing for joy. God has crowned 
many past years with the abundance of the fruits of 
the earth and with the wealth of the seas. The rich 
harvest has waved over extensive fields ; fleets of laden 
vessels have crowded every harbor. The voice of 
health has been heard in all our habitations ; children 
of the youth, the arrows in the hand of the mighty, 
crowd the play-ground and throng the school-room. 



4 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

The cry of war, if it has been heard at all, has been 
so distant and faint that it has created scarcely any 
alarm. As for His judgments, wc have not known 
them. O come, then, let us worship ; let us kneel, let 
us bow down before the Lord our Maker. He is our 
Shepherd, and we are the sheep of his hand. 

In rendering praise to God, it is always appropriate 
to consider the obligations which his goodness imposes. 
A careful consideration of our duties, and a faithful 
discharge of them, is one of the most acceptable offer- 
ings we can present. 

In answering the question proposed for our consid- 
eration this morning, the Savior repeated the parable 
of the good Samaritan. There are some points in 
this parable, which will assist us in giving a correct an- 
swer to the question, JVho is my neighbor 1 

1. They are our neighbors who are suffering bodily 
distress. 

The poor Jew, who had fallen among robbers, was 
wounded and bruised. Every wound had a voice that 
cried for help. The poor ye have always with you. 
They have not ceased out of the land. Poverty in its 
extremes is a crying want, asking charity from every 
Christian hand. The appetite for food, hunger, has 
every where an imploring and an importunate look. 
Ye who sit around groaning tables, daily fed to the 
full, remember this ; and let the eye that sees you bless 
you, and the ear that hears the voice of your kind sal- 
utation give witness to you. In Great Britain, it is 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 



'#'.: 



said, five millions of human beings go hungry to bed 
every night, to dream only of the full basket and the 
rich store which they cannot taste. The number is far 
less in this land, peopled wiih a fresh and vigorous 
race. There are some, however, here. They are to 
be searched out, and in the name of Christ the loaves 
and fishes which he blesses are to be broken unto them. 
A long northern winter is just beginning to spread its 
fleece of snow upon our hills, and its sheets of ice upon 
the streams and rivers. The fierce blast, that is only 
music to your ears, as it breaks around the corners of 
your well ceiled and warmed houses, has another 
sound to the half-clad, shivering group, huddled tt)- 
gether around the last dying coal in their grate. Your 
children are clothed in scarlet. For them you do not 
fear the cold. Go, carry the blanket to the scantily 
covered couch, replenish the half fed fire, and your 
bosom will glow with a genial heat that never warmed 
the breast of the miser and the selfish. 

" Will forty shillings warm the breast, 
Of worth and industry distressed ? 
This sum 1 cheerfully impart ; 
'Tis fourscore pleasure to my heart; 
And you may make, by means like these, 
Five talents ten, whene'er you please." 

It is more blessed to give than to receive. Wher- 
ever within your reach and within your means such 
objects of distress are found, they are to be relieved 
by your direct personal agency. 
1# 



6 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

No scheme of more extensive and general philan- 
thropy can excuse you from this primary duty. Not 
only is direct relief to be afforded to those in actual 
want, but more extensive methods of doing good are 
to be' devised. The man who furnishes an honest em- 
ployment to ten families, and teaches them, by tiic exer- 
cise of their own faculties, and by the use of their own 
strength, to provide for their want, is certainly a greater 
benefactor than he who distributes to them of his own 
treasures for a course of years. The one fountain of 
good may fail ; the other will flow down through many 
generations. Bi^t the objects of suffering wi'hin our 
unmediate neighborhood, though claiming our first at- 
tention, are not the only sufferers we can relieve. Our 
sympathy should be as wide as the world. 

'^ So Jesus looked on dying men." To him and to 
those in him, there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor 
free— a?/ are embraced, none excluded. We have a 
right to remonstrate, we ought to remonstrate, with 
th'at rich Bishop of Durham, who rides in state— a 
coach and six, with liveried, gilt lackeys on every cor- 
ner of his carriage— right by the supperless poor, the 
shivering orphan. Is he not the priest that passes by 
on the other side ? No titled inheritance, no gill from 
the crown, no critical essays on political econoniy, can 
excuse him or the like of him for rolling in earthly 
splendor, while Lazarus lies at his door full of sores, 
and suffering for the crumbs of his table which he does 
not get. " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye did it not to me." 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 7 

We have a right to remonstrate with the Grand Turk 
when he hunts the Jew, cruelly oppresses the descend- 
ants of Homer, Aristides and Plutarch. 

The Algerine that demanded custom and tribute from 
every vessel that rounded his cape, was rightly dealt 
with by Decatur, when he was taught, not as Gideon 
taught the men of Succoth, with briars and thorns, but 
with other instruction equally effective. We do well 
to send the missionary as the representative of a Chris- 
tian nation, to take down the whirling victim with the 
hook in his flesh, who bleeds in honor of his idol gods. 
It is well for him to stand by the funeral pile and ex- 
hort the young widow not to cast herself into the flame 
that consumes her husband. Let him tell the deluded 
mother, who hastens to the Ganges to cast in there the 
fruit of her womb, that with such sacrifices God is not 
well pleased. All these are our neighbors ; we should 
care for them, seek to deliver them from dumb idols, 
that they may worship and serve the living God. 

And in striking this wide circle for our sympathy, 
have we passed none who are more immediately re- 
lated to us, and whose claims are even more imperious 
than many I have named ? Shall the writhing of the 
victim of idolatry on the plains of India, make us forget 
the tortures of the slave within the borders of our own 
land ? Shall the infatuation of the wife and mother in 
Bengal lead us to forget the sundered ties and the be- 
reaved mother in Virginia: forty thousands in a single 
year picked out at random in that State and separated 



8 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

for ever from kindred and friends. Will you not in- 
terpose for the poor child in New Orleans, vvhoj 
maimed by the gory lash, drags his disabled limbs by 
the very door of a Christian temple, exciting excla- 
mations of horror from every beholder ? And yet this 
is the iniquity established by law in this land — and the 
victims have no remedy until your hands are stretched 
out for their deliverance. Ought we, in our haste to 
do ever so important a distant work, to rush by so 
many of our own countrymen, exposed to every spe- 
cies of bodily suffering, and deprived of the privileges 
of reading, and, to a great extent, of hearing, God's 
word, and who therefore have not the oil and wine of the 
gospel poured into their wounded hearts ? On the side 
of their oppressors there is power, and they have no 
comforter. Hope has almost fled from their bosoms ; 
they look in vain to any part of the horizon which sur- 
rounds them for help — the blue vitriol of despair cir- 
culates in every fibre of their hearts. 

Have you no bowels of compassion, no tender spot 
in your soul on which the burning tear of the slave 
may fall and excite your compassion ? Is the nation 
drunk with the passion of supreme selfishness — cased 
in triple mail of hardness of heart ? I know many 
specious reasons may be given for neglecting the 
wounded and bleeding slave. I suppose the Priest 
and Levite both had very plausible pretexts for their 
barbarity. They probably met soon after they had 
rushed by the poor wounded Jew, and had a dialogue 
something like the following : 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 9 

"Brother Aaron," says the Levite, ''that was a 
shocking sight — that poor wounded fellow pierced in 
so many places, bruised in the head and left there to 
die — I am not certain but we ought to have stopped 
and rendered some assistance." 

"No one," says Aaron, "has a deeper abhorrence 
of the system of robbery than I have — it is a wicked 
system ; comprises every sin, is the sum of all villa- 
nies — but mankind are divided into classes, you must 
remember — and that was a Gadite that lay there in 
the road — did you not observe the mark of his tribe 
upon him — a descendant of the old slave Bilhah, in 
Jacob's family ; and children, follow the condition of 
their mother, you know. If that had been one of the 
children of Judah or Benjamin, to be sure we ought 
to have delivered him." 

" But again," says Levi, " I have some reproaches 
of conscience, for l fear that the robbers will be out 
again when they see that we take no notice of their 
poor victim, and kill him outright." 

"I tell you, Levi," replies Aaron, " we have a spe- 
cific object in going down to Jericho : we are going to 
gather a flock of Iambs for the annual festival, and we 
must keep that end steadily in view, and turn aside for 
nothing. If we should get back too late for the pass- 
over, the price of our lambs would fall materially on 
our hands — besides, would the Lord ever forgive us if 
we were not at the feast of preparation ? " 

"Doth not our King Jehovah," saith Levi, "affirm 
in a case like this, that he will have mercy and not 
sacrifice ? " 



10 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

" Well, I know," replies Aaron, " this is a strong 
case, and it seems to be reasonable, so far as that poor 
fellow is concerned ; but you may as well attempt to 
fill up the bottomless pit, as to satisfy all the demands 
of those who would have us turn aside on our journey. 
I noticed, as I came along, that the vineyard of Amos 
wanted pruning sadly, and that the stone wall of Ne- 
hemiah was all falling down ; now if we stop to mend 
walls and prune vineyards, we shall never get to Jer- 
icho." 

'' Still, Brother Aaron, T cannot get those groans out 
of my ears, and that imploring look from the blood 
shot e3^e; I almost wish we had helped him up — 
lambs or no lambs, passover or no passover." 

" Well, I know," says the Priest, " it is a terrible 
system which produces such results, and I think the 
whole community ought to strive to put it down as 
quick as possible." 

" I agree with you. Brother Aaron, upon that point, 
and now there is another, upon which I have thought 
a great deal, and should like some further light. 
There is a whole community of these robbers, around 
here upon these mountains, and their head quarters 
are in the old cave of Adullam, where David hid 
from Saul. They have lived there for centuries — 
they are descended from old Simeon, whom his own 
father cursed for his cruelty on his dying bed. Now 
they are so numerous that they make bold to mingle 
in good society, and claim to be respectable, and 
some of them even pious. Now my query is, if they 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 11 

come up next week to the passover, and bring their 
lamb for sacrifice, whether I shall kill it for them, 
and whether you will sprinkle the blood on the altar 
and bless them in the name of the Lord, and pro- 
nounce them clean." 

" Now, brother, you have hit upon one of the most 
difficult of all subjects — you have struck the hard- 
est stratum of which human society is composed — 
these robbers are completely organized — they live 
under a system of severe and stringent laws — and 
all their wicked deeds are organic sins, the indi- 
viduals composing that band of Adullamites, are not 
accountable as they are for their own personal trans- 
gressions." 

The Levite was perplexed at this remark, and 
looked up as though he did not fully comprehend this 
saying of Rabbi Solomon. 

"Why," says Aaron, "you cannot prove but there 
may possibly be some one among that company of 
robbers who is a good man. He may have become a 
robber involuntarily. The laws of that company of 
banditti may have compelled him to be one of them. 
The implements of robbery may have descended to 
him — all his property may be vested in bludgeons, 
daggers, swords, lassos, and other instruments for way- 
laying and catching the unsuspecting traveller. Be- 
sides, while he remains there a member of the commu- 
nity, he owns a share of all the plunder stowed away 
beneath the stone ribs of the cave of Adullam. If he 
leaves his paternal inheritance and goes up to Mount 



12 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

Ephraim he would become poor, and be obliged to fall 
trees and raise wheat, as the Ephraimites do. So if 
he goes up to Zebulon, he must leave all his plunder 
and try the perils of the sea. ' We ought not to say 
therefore that unless he makes the resolute sacrifice, 
and renounce his property in the goods of Adullam, 
he is therefore not an Israelite indeed, a good man 
and citizen, and should be treated as an outcast from 
all the distinctions and privileges of Jewish society.' ^'* 
" How can I again," asks Levi, " take the lamb for 
sacrifice from the hands of one of these organic 
thieves ? Why the very lamb he brings me will be stol- 
en — it was nursed by other hands than his; and then 
he took it from a poor drover, bringing up the increase 
of his flock to sell at Jerusalem, to purchase a copy of 
the lav/ of Moses for himself and family to read. Now 
that poor man that was robbed will be there looking 
on when his own ewe lamb is to be oflfered — that 
bloody wretch will bring it, that I saw skulking in the 
bushes close by the wounded man, his warm dagger 
dripping with blood — and shall I not expose him be- 
fore all Israel ? Doth not the Lord hate robbery for 
burnt offering ? Hath not justice a sweeter savor to him 
than the fat of lambs — is it not more precious in his 
sight than rivers of oil ? " " Yes, yes, Levi, that is all 
true, but this scheme of organic sins is as old as our 
nation. There was our good old Father Jacob and his 
mother combined together, and by a system of lying, 
which system by the way is very wicked, they con- 

* See Dr. Chahncrs, as quoted by the American Board. 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 13 

trived to cheat Esau out of his birthright. God 
never reproved them for it ; of course lying is not a sin 
per se, it does not always imply personal guilt ; and so 
far as we know, Jacob had communion with God all 
this time.* And then the same shrewd old patriarch 
fixed the rods wittingly before the eyes of the herds, 
and paid Laban in a little of his own coin,iind made 
up for taking an extra daughter ofF his hands, by re- 
lieving him of a large portion of his flocks and his 
herds. God never reproved Jacob, so far as we 
know — taking a man's cattle therefore by fraud is 
not sin in itself; it depends upon circumstances. Now 
brother, if these Adullamites come up to the passover, 
I think we will kill their Iamb, and pronounce them 
clean, notwithstanding they come covered with the 
spoils of robbery. Besides, if we refuse, they have 
some of the Priests of the first rank among themselves. 
No sooner does one go and join them, than they make 

him a broad and very heavy breast-plate of gold 

they enlarge his phylacteries, make his ephod of the 
finest linen, and require but little labor of him, and 
that of the easiest kind. As these robbers carry on 
the work of plunder, they occasionally meet with a 
stubborn resistance on the part of the robbed and 
spoiled. They hate to take life when they can avoid 
it. They want their victims to go home and come 
laden again with the fruits of their own industry. 
They stopped the mule of a sturdy Israelite one day, 
a son of Issachar, took from the back of the mule, the 

* See Dr. Stowe's speech, passim 

2 



14 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

bag of figs and the bottles of wine which he was carry- 
ing up to Jerusalem to market. Not satisfied with 
this, they insisted that the owner should take them on 
his shoulder and carry them up the rugged path of the 
mountain to the mansion of the plunderers. Issachar 
sturdily refused this indignity. The Priest was sent 
for to add the sanction of religion to the law of vio- 
lence." 

" Well he found nothing," said Levi, '' in our 
sacred books to justify such wrong and wickedness 
as that." 

'' Indeed he did," answers Aaron, '* quote chapter 
and verse to the poor, ignorant, but honest son of the 
handmaid. ' These men in the cave,' said the Priest, 
' are the descendants of patriarch Benjamin, of whom fa- 
ther Jacob prophesied, "Benjamin shall ratten as a wolf ; 
in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night 
he shall divide the spoil." There, that shows you that 
the sons of Benjamin were clearly made to live with- 
out work — that they were to be supported by robbery. 
Now you see, you are one of those whom he was to 
strip and spoil, and as it is the will of God you must 
submit and bear it patiently. Just hear your father 
Jacob again, when he speaks of your tribe. " Issachar 
is a strong ass couching down between two burdens" — 
one burden is to raise his food, the other to carry it 
up the mountain — don't you see how plain it is? 
Again, Jacob says of him — " he bowed his shoulder to 
bear and became a servant under tribute.' " Can 
anything be plainer than that this whole system is all 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 15 

right, sanctioned by our most sacred oracles, and by 
the example of the Patriarchs themselves ? " 

" Well," says Levi, '' do as you please, Bro. Aaron, 
but I am determined never to slay another lamb for 
sacrifice for one of these robbers, and the next bleed- 
ing victim I see dying in the road, I intend to stop 
and help him up, and do what I can to heal his 
wounds, if there is never another lamb to bleed on 
Mount Moriah." 

Why is not this course of reasoning, these worthless 
apologies in the lips of this Jesuit Priest just as con- 
clusive as the apologies made for the organic sins of 
the slaveholders. To my mind the cases are precisely 
parallel. v.--l tl.c course of reasoning adopted to excuse 
or miti^ ilo the sins of a multitude, who have joined 
hands to commit iniquity would tolerate all sin, when 
perpetrated by large bc^dies of men. The invention is 
worthy of a disciple of Ignatius Loyola. It was uttered 
first from the lips of a Jesuit Judge — no protestant 
shall have the credit of it. Judge Lawless, a cath- 
olic, in 1836, at St. Louis, charging a jury concerning 
the mob who burnt Mcintosh at the stake, says, " If 
the destruction of the murderer of Hammond was the 
act, as I have said, of the many — of the multitude, in 
the ordinary sense of these words — not the act of 
numerable and ascertainable malefactors, but of con- 
gregated thousands, seized upon and impelled by that 
mysterious, metaphysical, and almost electric frenzy, 
which in all ages and nations has hurried on the infu- 



16 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

riated multitude to deeds of death and destruction — 
then I say, act not at all in the matter, the case then 
transcends your jurisdiction, it is beyond the reach of 
human law." 

There has been an improvement, I admit, of the 
charge of Judge Lawless ; he only excused an excited 
multitude. The modern version of his principle holds 
men excusable in proportion to the length of time for 
v/hich they have been connected with a system of 
iniquity. Two hundred years will sanction and sanc- 
tify robbery, and make it a lawful mode of acquisition. 

2. They are especially neighbors to the Christian, 
whom others neglect. The deed of t!ie vSamaritan 
would have been good, but not so manifest, nor ('. .1 
in such beautiful colors, if there had been no contrast. 
But the victim he reUeved had been seen, passed by 
and neglected — neglected by those on whom he had 
the strongest claim for sympathy and assistance. A 
refined taste, strong natural sympathy, will urge men 
to relieve an interesting or beautiful suflerer ; such an 
one may have more offers of assistance than are neces- 
sary, while the deformed, the ill-shapen, those against 
whom there is a strong general prejudice, may be en- 
tirely overlooked. It is the object of Christianity to 
open and fill a deeper channel in the human bosom ; 
to generate there a tide of divine benevolence that 
shall reach every description of sufferers and suffering. 
" The spirit of the Lord is upon me," saith its divine 
Author, " because he hath anointed me to preach the 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. H 

gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the bro- 
ken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them 
that are bruised J' Whole classes of sufferers are here 
described, most neglected by the world. If, then, you 
would be the disciples of Him who was meek and 
lowly, and sought not to please himself, seek the de- 
spised and the neglected, the wounded in body and 
in spirit, and pour into their wounds the oil and the 
wine of the good Samaritan. Is not the slave in this 
condition ? Has he the sytnpathy that a tvhite person 
would have in his situation. No ; no one will pretend 
it. By whom shall this lack of service be supplied, if 
not by the disciples of Him who sought the habitations 
of the despised publicans and sinners? 

While I urge upon you as a duty, and as an accept- 
able tribute of thankfulness to God, to sympathize with 
the distressed and afflicted slave, I am well aware that 
this, like every other thing good in itself, may be per- 
verted. There are some who are clamorous for sym- 
pathy with the distressed — they are righteous on this 
account, in their own eyes, and despise others. They 
claim to be the disciples of Christ, while they are far 
from manifesting his temper or his conduct. A single 
strand of flax does not make a cable ; a solitary virtue 
is very far from being a perfect character. Imitation of 
a single good thing is easy. You who hear me from 
Sabbath to Sabbath, will bear me witness that I do 
not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. Your 
2* 



18 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

own personal depravity is frequently demonstrated 
from the word of God and the experience of mankind. 
The washing of regeneration, the renewing of the 
Holy Ghost, is constantly urged. Salvation by the 
grace of God, through the merits of Christ's death, is 
the central sun of truth that shines from God's word 
in this sanctuary. We preach Jesus Christ and him 
crucified. You have not failed to hear of the danger 
of self-deception ; that every grace may be counter- 
feited ; that while you are clamorous for liberty, you 
yourselves may be the servants of sin. Do I err, that 
in addition to this, I strive to bear a faithful testimony, 
drawn from the word of God, in behalf of the slave ? 
I do not repeat it every Sabbath, but seek so to pre- 
sent it as not to disgust a discriminating taste and a 
Christian temper by the frequent recurrence of the 
same topic; and on the other hand, to avoid the 
charge of silence, through fear of prejudice or the un- 
popularity of the subject. 

And shall the pulpit be dumb on the subject of op- 
pression, in a land where nearly three millions of souls, 
immortal souls, live and die in ignorance — to whom 
the word of God is a scaled book, shut up from their 
eyes? Shall not the people be reminded, that in sixty 
years the victims of slavery have multiplied ^it'e times ? 
that where there was one slave when our fathers de- 
clared " all are born equal," there is a loliole family 
now ? that where there were only six of the present 
slave-holding States, at the time of the formation of 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 19 

the present constitution of the country, there are fif- 
teen now — five times as large as the old six slave 
States. And now, grown strong with success, impu- 
dent for want of proper rebuke, Slavery comes to the 
doors of Congress, with a state six times as large as 
Kentucky, and with the ring of slavery inscribed with 
eternity upon its brow. The constitution of Texas 
provides that the Legislature shall never have the 
power to emancipate the slaves of that State, without 
making full compensation in money to the pretended 
owners. 

The missionaries of the cross have been sent into 
the wilderness, to plant the Rose of Sharon, and they 
suffer the upas tree of slavery to grow unchecked by 
its side. They go to tame the savage and teach him 
the social virtues and domestic happiness, and suffer a 
system that crushes every family tie, to roll over the 
soil redeemed from barbaiism. They go to open the 
Book of God to the ignorant red man, and suffer him 
to shut it from his poor ignorant fellow traveller to 
eternity, the African. Christian Indians hold Chris- 
tian Africans in a condition where they cannot read 
the w ord of God. The American Board say, in their 
report, that if the believing masters among the Indians 
were to neglect any thing essential to the present com- 
fort or eternal welfare of their slaves, they would be 
disciplined. They do h.old them so that tliey cannot 
read the word of God. Is not this giving a full, but 
indirect sanction to the doctrine that the Wohd of 



'20 THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 

God is not essential to the present comfort or eternal 
welfare of the slave ? The whole drift of the Pteport, 
and the arguments used in its support, are calculated 
to give comfort and peace to the conscience of the 
slaveholder. The American Board at Brooklyn, and 
the Old School Assembly at Cincinnati, issuing docu- 
ments precisely alike in argument and conclusion, 
have erected two of the strongest fortresses in defence 
of slavery that could possibly be reared for its support. 
Both of these large and intelligent bodies of men, did, 
as I understand the case, give the sanction of their 
names, character, and, so far as they could do it, the 
sanction of the Word of God, to American slavery, as 
it now exists. They practically associated themselves 
with Gov. Hammond, who says, "God commanded 
American slavery four thousand years ago, through 
Moses." In the language of the New Englander, in 
relation to the Old School Assembly, " they (both) 
dodged the great practical question as to the abound- 
ing and acknowledged sin of slavery, and said noth- 
ing on that question, though called on by their situa- 
tion, as by a voice from heaven, to speak in behalf of 
the dumb, and thus, by their silence on one question, 
more probably than by their partial and negative ac- 
tion on the other, strengthened the bonds of slavery." 
If Dr. Junkin deserves a pair of silver handcutls, 
which the colored citizens of Cincinnati presented 
him, what do the other Committee deserve? I will 
not reproach them ; but I will open the grave of him 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 21 

who sleeps in the dark soil, beneath the bloody stone 
building at Alton: '' O, my brethren, what shall I 
say to those of you who recorded your votes in favor 
of the resolution that the Bible sanctions slavery ? 
It is not for me to reproach you, nor have I the least 
disposition to utter one unkind word. I only wish that 
I could make you sensible of the feelings I experienced 
when I first read that resolution as sanctioned by you. 
It did seem to me as though I could perceive a holy 
horror thrilling through all heaven, at such a perversion 
of the principles of the gospel of the Son of God. O, 
my brethren, may I not entreat you to pray over this 
subject, to ask for the wisdom of heaven to lead you 
into the truth ? Depend upon it, you are wrong, fear- 
fully wrong. Not for all the diadems of all the stars 
of heaven, though each were a world like this, would 
I have such a vote, unrepenied of, to answer for at the 
bar of God, my Judge." 

Have we not receded from the character of our 
fathers, w^hen Mr. Madison would not allow the con- 
stitution to admit the idea that man could have prop- 
erty in his fellow man ? when the Rev. Mr. Taite, who 
died at Beaufort, S. C, in 1795, declared, upon his 
death bed, " I should not consider myself admissive 
into the kingdom of heaven, if I died in possession of 
a slave." 

Let us, then, as one of the appropriate modes of ex- 
pressing our thanks to God for the precious civil and 
religious blessings we are this day enjoying, let us 



"42 



THE ROBBERS OF ADULLAM. 



cherish more warmly the outcast in our bosom, who 
Ues perishing beneath the arm of the oppressor. 
Many pass him by on the one side, by the winding 
path of civil policy, or in the mist-covered path of the- 
ological discussion. Go right straight to the sufferer ; 
make him feel that you have a heart and a hand, and 
cease not your efforts till millions shall lift unchained 
hands to heaven, and give thanks for their deliverance, 
and call blessings down upon your heads. 



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